


Once Upon A Time…

by badly_knitted



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: fic_promptly, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 07:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3373235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badly_knitted/pseuds/badly_knitted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawn is old now, but sometimes she remembers…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon A Time…

**Author's Note:**

> Written for james’s prompt ‘Buffy tVS, Dawn, when she's very, very old she seems to remember a story about being something else,’ at fic_promptly.
> 
> Vague spoilers for Season 5.

Dawn is old now, older than she can imagine sometimes. Today is her one hundred and second birthday; it surprises her every time someone mentions it. Her memory’s not what it used to be, but at her age, what is?

She’s had a good life mostly, she seems to remember that much. There were two, no, three husbands, five children, she can’t remember how many grandchildren and she never bothered to count the great grandkids. A big family, and all those she hasn’t outlived are here today. 

They talk about the past, and the things they remember. Their childhoods, their own families, friends long gone, and friends far away. Dawn joins in with a few anecdotes of her own, but… Her childhood memories don’t ring true and in the back of her mind, she dimly seems to remember a story about long ago, when she wasn’t human but something else; a key. A key to what, she doesn’t know; perhaps she’s forgotten, or else she never knew. It’s strange, and yet unlike a lot of the vague memories she has of her past, she doesn’t doubt it.

“Once upon a time,” she says in her cracked old-lady voice, “before any of you were born, I wasn’t human but something very different. I had a purpose and to keep me out of the wrong hands, I was disguised as a child and sent to a place called Sunnydale to be protected by a very brave and extraordinary girl…”

 

The End


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